[VIDEO EDITORIAL] Outshining the tyrant

Here’s to our hope that you had a Christmas visited by a star – whether in the form of a pleasant memory or a helping hand; a moment of joy; a dose of hope or a warm message; or a ray of light. 

It has been harder each year to celebrate our favorite season, because life has been harder, too. (READ: [EDITORIAL] Outshining the tyrant)

Before Typhoon Odette left more than two million Filipinos distressed and dislocated, this nation has been flooded with two years of pandemic hits-and-misses by its government, tortured by a circus of political clowns, and mocked by its abusive leaders.

But it is the season of joy, and by our very nature we scrounge for it even if buried in layers of grief and frustration.

Take Ana Patricia Non, Hidilyn Diaz, the local courts that decided to free activists who have been illegally arrested, and the gift that the International Criminal Court gave whistleblower Arturo Lascañas and the Nobel Prize committee gave Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov – they, along with many nameless and faceless Filipinos, have barreled through to help this nation find its way out of darkness, one step at a time.

But this is not to obliterate the conditions that made them push back. 

Government’s anemic response to the pandemic is made worse by the scandalous awarding of public contracts to Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation. Activist communities continue to work under the barrel of a gun. Philippine sports remain underfunded and mishandled, as the case of EJ Obiena has shown. The ICC probe is stalled because of President Rodrigo Duterte’s intransigence. And attacks against journalists and their websites have ramped up as the May 2022 elections near.

A tyrant’s job is to deprive us of stars that guide us, to snuff out the light in our lives, but we outshone the tyrant this year through our hard-earned stars.

For it’s not only true that there is good in the world. It’s also true that the good shines, and wins. – Rappler.com